How To Get A Better Result From Your Lead Generation Campaignhttps://stoddardagency.com
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Fri, 03 May 2019 01:35:59 +0000 en-US
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1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.1.1https://stoddardagency.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/cropped-Stoddard-Agency-1-32x32.pngHow To Get A Better Result From Your Lead Generation Campaignhttps://stoddardagency.com
3232How To Get A Better Result From Your Lead Generation Campaignhttps://stoddardagency.com/how-to-get-a-better-result-from-your-lead-generation-campaign/
Fri, 03 May 2019 01:35:50 +0000https://stoddardagency.com/?p=1318A lead generation campaign is one of the best marketing strategies to grow your small business. You can get leads from lead generation companies but most of the time these leads are ancient and useless; increasing your costs in the long run. Alternatively, you can create your campaign and generate leads independently. Using site visitor matching and in-market targeting strategy for your lead generation campaigns will give you a better result and lower customer acquisition costs.

Better Results For Lead Generation Campaign

Today I’m going to be talking about how to get a better result from your lead generation, how to get more leads and better leads by starting with a better source of leads, a better list, and better data. Before I dive into it though, please go to GetLeadsFirst.com. If you want to see a cool video that explains exactly how we get leads, where they come from, what our system and processes are. Also, there’s a cool offer there at the end especially for real estate agents and brokers if you want that to be done for you. There’s nothing to opt-in for, no email, nothing to buy at that point, just free information; you can take it and use it for yourself.

So let’s talk about what we’re talking about today. It occurred to me today, I was working with a new client and got a phone call. “Hey, I’m not quite sure how to use the CRM tool yet,” but I got on the phone with a lead, and I was amazed that the gal picked up the phone.” I was thinking, why were you amazed that the gal picked up the phone? I was like, why are you surprised that this gal picked up the phone? All of his lead sources up till now, have been miserable. In other words, he will make calls. Nobody’s ever there. No one ever responds when they do respond to act as if they don’t know what’s going on. Like they entered their name and some sweepstakes a year ago, and they’d berate him. That’s sad. Gosh, I would hate that. I would hate, hate to have to make those kinds of phone calls.

So it occurred to me, that’s because we do it differently and they’re several of my other clients were like, they’re amazing. They’re like, why are, why is this so different? At first, I don’t know how to answer that. I realize, well, it’s because we have a different process. Well, how different could it be? Well, I realized the number one difference is starting with the right list, the right source. So if you’re going to run ads, whether they be Google or Facebook or any other platform, and you have spent all this money and time perfecting these advertisements to try to get people into your sales and marketing and sales funnel, or to recognize your brand, why on earth would you put all that time and energy if you don’t have a good source or a list to put that ad in front of, to begin with?

Now there are several ways to have a better list:

1.) If you’re already doing this on Google and Facebook, you’re probably already familiar with retargeting or remarketing. Now, if you’re not, basically it’s the idea that they take a pixel, which is a piece of code, put it on your website or your landing pages from ads and when someone visits that the pixel fires places a cookie on the web browser and also lets that platform know, “hey, this person, who’s on Facebook right now has been to the website.” So we know that their website visitors so we can show different ads to them or the same advertisements over again, retargeting and re-marketing, the idea is that you put marketing in front of someone and whoever sees that marketing then gets more marketing. That’s all it is. They might make it sound more complicated, but it isn’t.

2.) There are ways to segment. You can have them. You could say that in Facebook for example, if they’ve watched a certain percentage of a video, then they’re going to see your next video. An example of this would be you sending out general marketing or branding and someone watches, 50% of one of your videos. If they see that video that’s just general, then you’re going to send them another video that’s more of a sales presentation or a request for a consultation or an offer of some kind, but they’re not going to see your offer or your pitch unless they see the general stuff first, that’s old hat. If you didn’t know about that, we could do that for you. If you want leads and especially if you’re a real estate agent or broker right now, go to GetLeadsFirst.com and I’ve got a cool free video there that explains that. You can also go to StoddardAgency if you’re not in the real estate business. Both links go to the same place right now, or you can look around at the different things that we offer.

Now, so one thing is retargeting or re-marketing, but how do you even get the people to show the attitude, to begin with? Now, this is where it gets a little tricky because all of the Facebook management folks and Google ad words management folks are going to try to tell you that they can do a bunch of targeting. It’s true, but it’s not what it used to be. There was a time before Facebook ended up all over the news that you could get a lot of demographic data and you could say, only show this ad to people that have this income. However, by the way, many us marketers have tested that, and it often didn’t work even when they offered it and now they don’t even offer it, or they don’t tell you, and they make it obscure, and it’s complicated.

You’re basically at the mercy of these powerful buyers or providers and the powerful seller or provider, which is Facebook and Google. They’re not going to tell you who the people are. It’s all behind their walled garden. It’s all very secretive. They don’t exactly tell you how it works. They decline your ad when they don’t like it. Then they try to give it, you say, point you to the privacy policy or the other policy or the terms of use or this or that and tried to say, well, you should have read it and you read it, and you still can’t figure it out because it’s changing every day. So, that’s just the way it is. So, but that is a form of targeting, and they do have some necessary information where you can, demographic and scale it down or can you can market to people who like individual pages, maybe an audience that you think is cool.

3.) Another thing you can do is geo-targeting where you can limit, by the reasonably good location. They still have that. We use that regularly for real estate agents, by the way, to pick neighborhoods and cities.

So, but what if you want to do better than that? What if you’re going to know who the people are or what if you’re going to be able to use that in multiple platforms or online and offline marketing. What if you want to know and be able to identify by name, who the people are and have that information to use in other platforms or another direct mail or something else. Well, you can’t do that. You can only use that pixel that re-targeting data in that platform that gave it to you. So Facebook’s for Facebook, Google’s for Google and Linkedin even has a little bit of their own that they’re starting to get better at. So you would have to have a way to identify these people.

4.) Now we have a service for that, actually called a site visitor and also our in-market targeting data does that as well. We have a site visitor or anybody that goes to your website, we can identify them, and all those anonymous visitors. Then you can use that data in your marketing, on any platform. If you’re interested in that, go to StoddardAgency.com. So, there’s that.

Now, what if you want to know who’s a potentially a good fit before you even send any ad whatsoever? Like anything well, then you need data. Now, where do you find that? Well, this is where – I hope you can see on reverse engineering and going back to the beginning here of the source of people, the list, who are we going to even advertise to. That matters. Otherwise, you’re wasting money on; you can’t afford, if you’re a small business, to advertise to everybody like Superbowl ads. You want to get the maximum impact at the lowest cost. Well, how do you do that? You have to target the needles in the haystack instead of advertising to the haystack. It would help if you advertised to the needles. Now we’re getting down there where I’m reverse engineering.

Well, you have to have a source of that data. Now we have, that’s called in market targeting. Now we have a license. I’m not afraid to say that I’m a licensee, I’m not the owner of that company, but we have an exclusive license with a company that proprietary technology and gathers the data and gathers lists, spends much money doing that. We spend money to keep our license in good standing as well. Also, we then take that, and we can apply all of that data to our advertising. It’s very cool stuff.

So what is this data? What’s in market targeting? We’re not the only source of data. There are other places where you could get lists of people to market to that are appropriate for your market, for your business, that is in the market for what you sell. You can do a Google search online for a list. I used to use a variety of websites to buy lists of people that are fitting a specific need or demographic in the old days is a costly and very expensive for the list and very expensive to advertise because you’d have to use direct mail. You get an address and a name; you’d have to send a mail, wait for the results, see if it worked several weeks. So then it’s expensive. Nowadays it’s super trick cheap. It’s an amazing time we live in.

However, that data, a lot of that ancient sources are old or, or not as appropriate. It doesn’t contain what you need, which is an email address so you can market to them online. So now there are companies like type in, behavioral targeting, behavioral data into Google and see what pops up. You’re going to see much stuff, but there’s much misinformation, and there are very few companies that make sure that this is useful data and then make sure that it’s very, very recent. It needs to be relevant.

If somebody is searching for let’s say, a new home and thinking of listing and they start searching, does it matter that they did that six months ago or is it more relevant if they’re doing it now within the last 30 days? Because now they’re in that mode of searching and they’re thinking about it. You want to market during that time there, and it could be looking for a dentist. They could be looking for a personal trainer. They could be looking for a chiropractor. When they’re actually in that mode of searching, that awareness phase, that is when they’re the highest likelihood of being a right customer.

Therefore, this is your shortest path to profit. This is your surest path to profit. This is now becoming relevant for you. So you want to show your ads to those people. So in market targeting is the idea of getting the data. We put pixels, behind many payment gateways, meaning they’re not bots, they’re people that buy things and register with emails, multiple emails. We gathered that all on what’s called an identity graph. Now, this is very important; a lot of these data companies don’t go into detail. I’m going to go very briefly into the basics and identity graph is like this big list. It’s like a spreadsheet maybe. What it is is it’s collecting all of that information permanently on that person that’s searching the internet. Now they have a cookie on their browser, and they can go, and they also have a specific device they’re using, and when they go and visit one of the publishers’ websites that we have our pixel on, it fires, checks to see if the cookie’s already there. If it’s not a place, is it? If it is, it goes, oh, this person’s coming back. Let’s see what device are they on and what email are they watching now or using now? So then we would add that to the graph, pretty soon the graph has filled out with all of this great information. The average person uses two and a half emails online and has three to four devices. So we are collecting all that and then looking at that behavioral data. It’s legal, totally above board, totally ethical. People are saying that they’re okay with this when they go on these websites.

Now you have to be careful about how you use that website. We use it with responsibility. We don’t have this information exposed on my computer. It’s all encrypted and what’s called a hash a shot to 56, which is the industry standard. It’s encrypted; it’s safe, it’s not getting into the wrong hands. Then we use that responsibly. We can upload that to Facebook. So we get all this behavioral data. We see that someone is in the market for buying or selling a house. When we see that, and they will be, how do we know that we’ll they’re visiting specific URLs or doing certain keyword searches, and they’re also consuming content, doing social media behaviors. We see all that. Well, this person who happens to be in your area, Mr. Realtor, it looks like they’re starting to look like they’re really in the market to sell and they’re doing all kinds of searches. We could see that.

So then we take that data, and we put that in, and we use that data to choose whom we’re going to advertise. Then you can pick any medium because I’m not stuck with Facebook or Google or anybody. It’s not behind their walled garden. We have the data; it’s the first party data. Here’s the key, not second, third, fourth party data, which is what most of you guys are used to using and don’t even know it. This is the first party data. It’s our me and my client’s data that we have, and if they’re using our site visitor, we know who’s on their website, which means they’re an even higher likelihood of being a good prospect. That’s the best you can get is someone who’s thinking about you in particular. The shortest path to profit. We take that, and then we advertise, put our ads in front of them. Here’s what’s cool about that. The ads are going to be more relevant because we’re showing ads to people that are in the market.

They’re already saying they’re in the market. So, therefore, the more relevant, what is Google and Facebook, their relevancy engines, which means that they like it when people consume the content and engaging the content and they show it more often, sometimes for free. So if you’re a business owner, you want your ad showing more often for free, right? Because of your ad to the right people who are more likely to engage, that drives your cost per advertising down your cost per click down, which drives down your cost per acquisition. Pretty soon it’s cheaper and faster and easier for you to acquire the customer. Now, if you can afford to advertise more, you can beat your competition. Here’s the key. You need to be able to afford to pay more for a client.

So let’s say your competitor can afford to pay $25 for a lead for a client, for a closed client. They can’t pay more than that because they can’t make it work. However, if you can spend more, you can beat them all day long, you can advertise more often more frequently and take their business well, how would you be able to afford more than them? Well, you could afford more than them that if you have a greater transaction, you have more a long tail an ascension ladder, different ways, upsells, things that you can sell that are more than just your competitors sells. You have more products and services. Or if you can monetize that lead more. Another way to do that as is having a higher close rate. If you know you’re going to close higher because you have a better follow up system or the leads are better, to begin with, then you can afford to pay a little bit more.

If you’re targeting better and you can follow up better, and you could have a higher profit per customer. These are all factors that play a part. We get into that in more than other videos. By the way, if you’re still watching this or listening to this in the podcast and you want to know how do I do this, how am I getting these leads for my clients? Then go to getleadsfirst.com. Don’t do the https. I don’t know if I got that set up correctly yet or go to StoddardAgency.com. However, if you go to getleadsfirst.com, the key is you need to get leads first before your sales process will do any good, and you need to get leads first before your competitors because the first to the lead is the most significant advantage.

So that is that you start with the list. The list is key. Another way of saying it is the data. When I say data and list, it means the same thing because I’m talking about behavioral data which relates to real human beings, what they’re doing. There’s a difference between demographics and behaviors. Demographics are fine. That’s one way to kind of figure out, guessing work whom you might want to advertise to, but it’s doesn’t even hold a candle to behavior. The behavior is when someone says, “Oh, I’m looking for what you sell.” If they’re looking for what you sell, that’s way better than other 35 to 45 male who lives in this neighborhood or whatever, and it makes this income. Who cares compared to they’re looking for what you have, so they’re looking to list or to buy a home.

That’s whom you want to advertise to. How do you get that behavioral data, behavioral marketing, in-marketing, behavioral data? That data is the key to the whole thing because that’s how we generate a list that superior — one last word on that. You take the data, and you can online or offline do whatever you want, but you can upload it to Facebook, to a custom audience. Once you have a custom audience based on that data, it’s a better starting point. Otherwise, you’re letting Facebook and that’s what we’re paying Facebook and Google to do is not the just the advertising on their platform, on their media. It’s the premium you pay is for their targeting. That’s what we’re paying for. Also, that’s the secret sauce that they hold real tight. Well, what if you say, I don’t need that. I got my list, and you advertise to it.

You just cut your costs. Now you could use their targeting, but here’s how you start with a better list. Rather than paying for them to, you know, guess and try to figure it out and then find people and later try to find more people like that. You start with the people that they like that or that you know that you want and you give those, and then you use their behavioral targeting on top of that. So their artificial intelligence, their algorithms working on top of that saying, oh, let’s find a look-alike matches customer look like matches off of this list.

This awesome to begin with. Behavioral targeting in-market. People that are in-market for what you sell list. Very cool stuff. I hope you got something of this. Start with a better list. You can do your search for behavioral in-market data. You could buy data, and you could start with a list and old school list to from one of the big data companies, US data. There’s a whole bunch of them. I can’t even remember the name off the top of my head. If you search, you’re going to see all kinds of stuff on this like how to buy a list, buying a list for my business. I mean you could research this for days but if you want to shortcut the whole system and get superior results and then go to getleadsfirst.com and we’ll be happy to show you a free video there to explain it exactly how you do it, nothing to even do or opt-in for. We’d be happy to help you if you choose at the end of it. All right, guys, have a terrific day. We’ll talk to you soon. Take care.

]]>How to Troubleshoot Your Marketing and Why It’s Importanthttps://stoddardagency.com/how-to-troubleshoot-your-marketing-and-why-its-important/
Thu, 02 May 2019 02:49:01 +0000https://stoddardagency.com/?p=1306Facebook ad campaigns can have minor issues and things don’t work out perfect the first time. The solution? Troubleshoot marketing by testing your ads continuously.
Why You Must Troubleshoot Your Marketing

Hey everybody, Jesse here. Today I want to talk to you about troubleshooting your marketing and how important that is. I’ve said this before, and I’m starting to believe it more and more and more and more. There is no such thing as an expert marketer. There are only expert testers. That’s all we can do. You have a great idea. You test it. If it works, it was a great idea. If it wasn’t, it was an also-ran. Even ideas that work, things change. They stopped working. You need to retest. You have a control, which is the winning advertisement or the winning piece of marketing that gets a result. Run it until it doesn’t work anymore. But at one point it probably won’t, or it will slow down. That becomes the control piece that you’re trying to beat with better ideas, but you don’t get rid of it until you can prove that another one will beat it. So that’s the lesson. We got that out of the way.

Now, a couple of stories here, and by the way, if you want to know how to get leads for your business and you want us to do it for you, I’ve got a really cool a free video that explains exactly how we’re doing it right now, especially in the real estate industry. If you’re a real estate agent or broker, you’re going to want to go to GetLeadsFirst.com. Go there because it’s free. There’s nothing to opt in for. You don’t even have to put your email address in or anything. You can get to watch exactly what we’re doing right now to produce a seller leads for real estate agents. It’s a great example. If you’re not in the real estate, it actually will still educate you on the overall theory of how it works. You’re welcome to use that in your own business. Take it and try it yourself. If you want our help, we’ll at the end of the video we explain how we do that as well.

All right, so getting back into the story today, I was working with my team on our, our Facebook ad campaigns and I received a report and then I put it together with some of my information and we take that and we write it all up nice and neat and we send it to the clients. It’s cool. This week I sent one to my real estate agents that today, both of them early in the morning and, there are minor issues that we’re dealing with. Surprise, surprise, things don’t work out perfect the first time. So here’s, here’s just an example and a lesson, a word of warning. If you have a good ad for let’s say, and it’s locally based, right? Like it’s geography based. So Geo-targeting like you know, for example, I have a client who’s in one city, Bellingham, Washington and she wants all the leads to be right there. Now she’s willing to go out a little bit, but only so far because you don’t only want to drive so far and deal with that. Now as a marketer though, to make my life easier, I want it to be vast as the whole state, right? So there’s a compromise.

So we try to get it as narrow as we can. Here’s the problem. The population in some of these little towns up there close to Canadian borders is pretty small. So it’s really easy to oversaturate the market. We can run an ad and haven’t seen too much, and it becomes less relevant. Remember, Facebook, Google, relevancy engines, they’re in the business of showing stuff that people want to look at and click on. If people don’t look at it and click on it and engage with it, Facebook don’t like it. That means people are going to spend less time on their platform. They want a lot of engagement. The more engagement, the lower the prices to you, the cost per click goes down. If you can get a lower price, that means you’re able to show your ad. Either you’re saving money, or for the same amount, your ad’s going to be seen by more people.

So when you oversaturate an ad, which is easy to do, by the way, that’s why you have to start with small budgets and gradually work up. Then the cost per click goes up. Well, my cost per click, I’m trying to keep this puppy low. Twenty bucks, ten bucks. We get it lower, sometimes seven, which is fantastic by the way. It’s ridiculous. I mean, there are other people out there paying 200. So, you know, our costs are amazingly low. Our secret sauce, is we’ve got better data, we’ve got better targeting, and we have a better funnel. But that’s a topic for another video. We’re just talking about the danger of overselling saturation. The cost per click creeps up. That means there’s going to be fewer leads, which means there’s going to be fewer closes, which means I’m going to get hurt. And so as my client, she doesn’t want fewer leads. Now you could say when were they better qualified, the better area, whole different topic. We’re assuming if all is equal, the number does count, the number of leads and the cost per click influences that.

So what do we had to do? We had to pick out a few more towns and sub-niche into different neighborhoods. So you might think, oh well she doesn’t want to have, you know, leads coming from far away. Well, we didn’t have to do that, sneaky little trick, because some bigger cities can be like Bellingham divided into different neighborhoods. Those different ads can have a slightly different target, and because of the ad copy calling out to the neighborhood, people are going to engage it more on it, who live in that neighborhood, who were interested in buying in that neighborhood. Therefore without having to go too broad, we were able lower our cost per click by niching down further within the area, but still giving it a different name in the ad because we can use a neighborhood rather than just the whole city. There’s a trick lesson for the day. Also, we also are branching out outside of the city to get the higher population because again, that’s a problem either way and it’s a good compromise, and I think we’re going to be okay. We’re going to be good.

The second thing that happened is we need more pictures. We required more photos that were real life pictures, and you want to get vertical pictures, not horizontal for real estate ads most of the time and timelines. Now most of the images that professionals take our horizontal and fancy and you might have to crop them, but just good old cell phone pictures end up working better. Who would have to think it? Right? Just better click-through rate. So that’s important for lead generation when it comes to a real estate agent. Watch that over-saturation and get them pictures of the front of houses, people like that.

Then the other agent that I had who’s campaign just got started, Ryan, we also send a report to today. Both of them are getting a fantastic number of leads by the way. There’s nothing to complain about an excellent deal compared to any other option they have right now. So we’re proud of that, but we still want it to be better. We can always be better, constant and never-ending improvement. CANI, that’s a little Tony Robbins deal there.

So for him, we got the pictures, but he also gave us a great suggestion.He noticed in our, autoresponders in text and email that we were saying things like “when’s a good time to call?” Then that would get people pushing back who didn’t want to call yet. You know they want to text, an email, we would later try something like, “do you have anything else you want to tell us about your home?” People say no. So Ryan had a great suggestion. He said instead of that, why don’t we have some more open-ended questions that are narrowing, like “is there anything that you can think of that might add more value?”, things that you think of that you have done to the home before the home that might have added more value to your home? Now, in case I didn’t make it clear, we’re talking to people who were running ads to people that want to know the valuation of their home, and they may be interested in selling with an agent because they want to list there with an agent because they want to sell their home. These kinds of questions are excellent. Now we’ve got to be careful.

Here’s another lesson. If we get too nosy on our initial outreach questions to somebody that fill out a form, then we tend to push them away a little bit sometimes or making them work too hard, and they just wanted to know how much their home was worth. So there’s always a balancing act. Plus we found that instead of doing that via text and email if you get out and make that phone call within the first minute. They already have their phone in their hand, your closing rate goes up 400%, and the engagement rate goes up because they got the phone in their hand and they’re thinking about it, and the chances are that pick up the phone. So if you can call them in the first minute, at least first five minutes, man, it’s a big, big deal. Big Deal. So do it if you’re getting leads and you’re doing lead generation, and if you can’t do it, get somebody who can call because you’ve got to get on the phone and talk to people and help them and be cool and give them good stuff. Be Helpful to them. You are not talking about like sinking your claws into them like some high tech, crazy killer salesperson. This is not coffee’s for closers stuff. It’s just being friendly and helpful and being there right then at that moment. The response rate goes up, and the close rate goes up. It’s incredible how that works. So we’re taking his suggestions, and we’re incorporating them, but we’re testing them carefully. Again, testing. There’s no such thing as an expert marketer, just an expert tester. So we’re going to test that messaging.

Does it work? Maybe, but we need another enough sampling to test it. Do more questions, different questions work. You got to test everything. So, back to the point. If you want to know more about how to get leads for your real estate business, then go to GetLeadsFirst.com.It’s getting leads first because you need first leads before your sales process can be of any value whatsoever. Second, you want to get to that lead before your competitors do. That’s what we do. And we can explain in a video they’re free, nothing to opt in for anything. Just sitting there ungated and all that. You can watch it. You can learn exactly what we’re doing and how we do it. See how you can apply it to your business and if you want help with it, we offer that at the end too. It’s getting leads first because you need first leads before your sales process can be of any value whatsoever. Second, you want to get to that lead before your competitors do. That’s what we do. And we can explain in a video they’re free, nothing to opt in for anything. Just sitting there ungated and all that. You can watch it. You can learn exactly what we’re doing and how we do it. See how you can apply it to your business and if you want help with it, we offer that at the end too.

We show you exactly how that works. It’s pretty good. It’s a good video. I would watch the whole thing from beginning to end. It’s an excellent video. I’m proud of it. Now, if you’re not in real estate and you want general information from us, go to StoddardAgency.com. Go to either domain, and you can find the same stuff.

So the recap on the lessons today:

1.) Testing. When it comes to your marketing. If you have a team doing it, make sure they’re testing and get the reports from them on their testing, so you know what’s working, what’s not. Don’t just blindly trust that they’re doing all that.

2.) Make sure that you don’t over saturate your market by increasing the ad budget too fast. If you’re geo-targeting, because the ad that’s shown too many burns out, not burns people out, they see it too much, but second, because of that, they’re not engaging in it as much. It’s going to drive up your cost per click and your cost per lead, which is a lousy deal. You’re not going to get as many leads, or you’re going to get to spend more money for the same number of leads either way.

3.) Getting excellent pictures. Real estate agents, of the front of houses. Not Quality like a pro, just volume, just photos of the front of houses vertical with your phone. Click, click, click. No big deal. Just do it. You need that for your ads.

4.) Then watch and test your followup system as well with your text messages and your emails. You are adding questions that are friendly and helpful but not too pushy because you can drive people away. Get on the phone with them. I guess that’s the last one is get on the phone within one minute to increase your closing percentage by nearly 400%.

If you want to know where that statistic comes from, it comes from a study that was done with an extensive sampling of people and it’s the facts. Just the facts. If you want that leave it in the comments. “Hey, send me that report” or somebody could put the link to the GetLeadsFirst.com in the comments because I didn’t do it. That’d be nice too. If you have any other questions, please leave them for me. I’d be happy to help.

]]>How To Scale Your Business With Your Own Lead Generation Systemhttps://stoddardagency.com/how-to-scale-your-business-with-your-own-lead-generation-system/
Sat, 20 Apr 2019 02:19:24 +0000https://stoddardagency.com/?p=1288If you want to grow your business, you must create your own lead generation system but most importantly, have a follow-up system that you can use to relentlessly pursue your leads and increase conversion. You need to have a source of leads without relying on popular review sites like Zillow, Yelp, Angie’s List, Home Advisor, and Amazon.

Hey guys, it’s your pal, Jesse Stoddard here. I am going to talk to you – I got note cards even to try to figure out what I’m going to talk about today to make sure I don’t wander off too far, but I’m talking about what’s working now. This is a shout out specifically to small business owners, and independent sales professionals, real estate agents, mortgage brokers in particular. I’m going to be talking about real estate agents a lot, but this does apply to a variety of businesses. Now, first of all, here’s the deal. You need a follow-up system before you bother having a bunch of leads. Either purchase leads marketing efforts, having lines in the water, building out your marketing machine. You need to make absolutely sure you have a sound follow-up system in place. The second thing is that you need to attract leads and fill the pipeline.

If you want to grow your business, you need to have a source of leads. If you want more referrals, you need to have leads that can turn into happy customers that you can then get referrals from. If you’re going to be able to give referrals to referral partners, you need to have leads to provide them. If you want to receive referrals from referral partners, you need to be able to reciprocate by giving them leads, so they’re more likely to provide you with leads. If you show that you create happy customers because you had leads that you turned into satisfied customers, your referral partners are more likely to give you leads. Now the third thing is you need to execute without whining. So if you have a sound follow-up system, basically a sale system, I call it a follow-up system because I really believe that the essence of sales is actually follow up, to one of the most critical parts anyway.

If you have a good value proposition, you’re a good person, and you’re trustworthy, then you need a follow-up system to make sure people know that you care. A lot of times people don’t know you, like you or trust you, yet they’re not going to do business with you. But if you keep following up, they eventually will as long as you continue to provide value. Follow up system should include some software because you may not trust yourself always to remember everything. If you’re old school, you better have a lot of paper and pen systems and calendars and use them. If your new school, be careful that you don’t get caught up in too much tech, you can get blown away by all the tech, and you miss the cart for the horse or the forest for the trees.

Whatever analogy works for you and you major in minor things because really it’s an 80, 20 deal. 20% of what you do is going to be responsible for 80% of the results. So the mere fact that you’re following up consistently is probably good enough. You probably don’t need to go really high tech. Every time I go high tech, it costs a lot of money, and half the time it doesn’t work, and then it breaks. Whereas when I go simple doesn’t cost very much money. It’s beautifully simplistic, easy, less moving parts to break. And at the end of the day, it puts my focus back on what I need to be, which is helping other people. So too much emphasis on tech can be harmful. So if you do have a lot of tech requirements and get someone to help you with that and do stick to what you’re good at, have them do tech.

If you are really good at tech then probably and you want to do it all yourself, just be careful with your time and really maybe you should find someone who’s better at sales and you do the tech. Think about that. All right, so then, attracting the leads, filling your pipeline is very important that you always have leads coming in. If you are a real estate agent and you are building your whole brand, well I’m going to tell you right now, most people don’t see the difference between you and everybody else. I’m going to ask you this question. I want you to answer it honestly and leave it in the comments. I would love to see your comments in or challenge me if you like. Even just leave a comment that we can start a discussion on this. This is a big one.

If I’m the prospective buyer or seller of a home and I want to list with an agent, why should I do business with you compared to all of your competitor, rather than using any of your competitors or any other option available to me, including doing nothing? I think this is Dan Kennedy’s way of asking it, which I think is brilliant. I think he might even trademark it. So you know, Dan, we give you credit. Go to his site, buy his stuff. But something like this where the key question is why I should buy from you rather than any of your competitors or any of my other options to solve my problem, including doing nothing, which is an option, right? You have to answer that question. Now. Most of the time the answer is well because I’m great. I got good customer service.

So none of the other agents have good customer service. While I’m not saying that mine’s better, how do you quantify that? Well because I have more testimonials. Than who? Than everybody? No one else has any testimonials? Because I charge the same as all the other agents. You charge a fee that’s relatively the same as everybody else. So the price isn’t lower. You give any money at the end to the client? Well, a little bit, but not much. You paid for the home staging, cashback closing? Well, yes. No, a little bit, but so does the guy down the street. So in other words, what you’re telling me is you cost the same, you don’t really offer anything different. I mean really substantially different. And maybe in your mind, well I have experienced, and the others don’t. But how do you prove that and is that really clear to the potential buyer or seller, the customer?

If you can’t show that you’re any different from anybody else, then how are you going to get business? Well, I’m going to tell you one way that you can, that’s by being FIRST. BE FIRST. BE THE FIRST ONE TO THE MARKETPLACE. How do you be first? Well, you have to know who’s in the market, who’s in the market for what you sell. If you’re a real estate agent, you’re looking for people that are in the market to sell their home, and they’re looking for someone to list with. Or they’re looking to buy a home. If you’re a mortgage broker looking to get a mortgage, buy or refinance, right? So how do you find somebody who’s like that? Well, that’s what we talk about in a lot of my other videos. You need to have an in-market targeting type system. You need to do your own lead generation and not rely on the big boys.

You know, if you are relying on Zillow, they’re selling it to everybody else. By the time it gets there, everybody else has seen it. Boomtown, any of those, nothing against them. They’re good services. There’s nothing wrong with getting leads from them, but I’m going to tell you right now, the more you become reliant on them, the more power you’re giving them and the less power you have. And you are just another small fish in a big pond with lots of lots of other fish. So having your own lead generation system, your own marketing machine is essential so that you can have enough leads getting into the system. You can get to them first before your competitors. That’s the big takeaway here. And then finally, execute without whining. If you get a lot of leads, and then you realize you don’t like working well, then you shouldn’t have gone into business for yourself to begin with, because it’s all about work.

You can’t avoid it. So if you’re going to execute, then you can play this game. If you’re not going to follow up, then don’t. Now you can use technology to help. I have a client of mine, Ryan uses a call service to help make all the phone calls to the leads, kind of prescreening. Nothing wrong with that or an assistant or if you are a broker and you have multiple agents, you can give it to them. But here’s the deal. You’ve got to do that work. You need to call fast within one to five minutes can increase your closing percentage by nearly 400% and then you need to follow up. If you are there first, you can position yourself better as a solution provider. You can frame or pre-frame the conversation showing them why your value proposition is the ideal choice over and above any competitor, including other services that aren’t direct competitors and or doing nothing.

And you can show up more often for cheaper, which helps build the consistency, the memory, and the branding. Now let me ask you this, can people act on something they don’t remember? No, no they don’t. They can’t. So you have to be memorable, which means you have to be there regularly. How do you afford to do that? That’s expensive. If you know who they are, if they know the needles in haystacks, it’s cheaper to advertise to them. So those are the three big things, have the system of follow-up in place or at least, a working system that you can improve as you go, dump leads in and then execute. It sounds so easy, and yet it’s so easy to overlook, and a lot of people aren’t doing it. If you’ve been listening here and you’re curious, hey, I want to know more about how I can get a lead generation system going from my business.

Now, if you’re a real estate agent right now, I’ve got something very special called our seller leads program, not buyer leads like everybody else. It is a very different seller leads, and all you have to go is to Get Leads First. Obviously got to get to lead before your sales process even matters and also you want to get there first before your competitors. So getleadsfirst.com and if you have another kind of business and you just want to check out what we’re doing, go to Stoddard Agency. You can learn more about our in market targeting program and lead generation. Okay. If you need leads. But I’m also gonna tell you one other little quick story. I have a client now, a mortgage broker, and I went into their office to talk to them about what they have to look forward to with these leads and educate them on how to get the most out of it properly. In case they thought I was nefarious or something. And I realized I wanted to share this in one of these videos because I had somebody email me the other day and said, it all sounds great except for I don’t want to invest in your hundred percent guaranteed refundable deposit. I’ve heard that before. I’ve never gotten money back. And I thought, wow, that’s sad. We live in a sad world. First of all, I feel bad for her because like, wow, you know, people don’t give you your money back when they promised. I mean, and then you’ve got to take them to a court or something. I don’t know. That was sad to me. I’m giving money to people all the time and just on blind faith. So I must be like a sucker or something cause I buy everything. I buy all the courses.

All the $3,000 courses, 6,000, I bought something for six grand to learn how to do stuff and then I’m paying money for advertising with no guarantee that it’s ever going to do anything for some of these agents. You know, it’s been anywhere from three to $6,000 a month just to produce leads. It’s a lot of money, and I’m just doing it on blind faith. Not blind faith. I’d say it’s a calculated risk because we do know what we’re doing in terms of what we can expect, but there is still a risk. Even if you run all the numbers, there’s a risk. So I don’t know what to tell her. I felt terrible, but I think that’s just the world we live in.

And so I want to make a video, maybe, hopefully, you guys, as you get to know me and you get to know where my heart is, I really do want to help, that maybe you’ll go, okay, well this makes sense. So if you want to find out how I work at all and exactly how I create the leads and exactly what you can expect you go to getleadsfirst.com. Now, when I went to the mortgage company, I said, all right, here’s how this all came about. I used to do it all the other agencies did, right? And all the other agencies, all my competitors, they say we’re going to run your ads for you, your Pay Per Click ads, Facebook, Google, whatever. We’re going to charge you a retainer, fee, X dollars a month. Here’s what you probably can expect. No guarantees. Here are your leads. Good luck. Give me money, and then I’ll do work for you. That’s normal. There’s nothing wrong with that.

Part of my business still runs on that system, but, I wanted to do something different. Okay. I was also looking for a way to provide better service. So I’m sitting with my buddy Phil, who owns the mortgage brokerage and we were having lunch, every other week for years. And I’m sitting here hearing about the what they have to go through in their business, and I’m the marketing guy, and yet we’ve never worked together. And so finally I’m like, Gosh, I got to find a way to provide a better service. I want to create more opportunities for them and for me. I want to remove the obstacles that are usually in the way, and we’ll make it easier. So all of these things, I’m thinking in my mind. And finally I went to him and said, hey, what if I just, what if a little bit of money seed capital here, but really I put my money where my mouth is, and you don’t really have to pay for the leads, and I guarantee it all, and then you just pay me when it’s proven to be successful.
And they’re like, what? Like nobody does that. Everybody charges the retainer fee, or they charge per lead. You know, 50 hundred dollars a lead you buy 30 leads for three grand or 50 leads for five grand or whatever, and then you’re just like, wow, that’s terrible. Or The Zillow leads for 100 bucks and you’re like, the person’s a Yahoo, and you’re like, I just wasted 100 bucks. Like it’s painful. So I’m gonna remove
that obstacle. So I said, hey, let’s do this other way. This, nobody else is doing this. This is crazy. Well, why would I do it? A.) I believe in small business, and I believe that we need small business. I want to encourage it. I want to be a part of that process. I want to partner with people. I’m looking for longterm business relationships. B.) The powerful suppliers are taking over, and we need to take back power from them. Those big companies that produce review sites and directory sites in the Zillows and the Yelps of the world and the Home Advisors by Angie’s List. They have a lot of power, but we need to get some power back from them. Then I also thought that, well, if I offer this guarantee, it’s kind of like I’m putting my name on the line too and we’re partnering rather than me just being a service provider.
And you could take it or leave it. I have to be careful how I say this because I’m not saying that other agencies do this, but I just don’t want to feel like a leech. Like I’m just like trying to get my claws in them to make some money. I just don’t like that. I want it to feel like a partnership. Like we’re in it together. So I offered this crazy thing, and I decided to do the unthinkable and invest in their company in the form of paying for the advertising for them, which is rare. Seldom happens. So now we have my second card, aligned motivations. So the aligned motivations now, because I’m investing in that advertising and I get paid based on the results after the fact, and I guarantee it all.
13:58 Now we have congruency. We’re in it together. We have less dissonance and friction between sales and marketing, right? Which happens typically out there, sales and marketing, we can be a synergistic team. Now we have the same alignment of incentives, right? We have the alignment of priorities. We have an alignment of mission, right? So, and I only make money when you do. That was the point. I make money when you do. So we are together. And then the other thing I wanted to say about it is, I’m not better. I’m not better. I’m not better at all. I’m not better than you. I’m not better than the sales team. Sales and marketing are often at odds in a business, but I feel like, no, no, no. We are two sides of the same coin, and it’s the Ying and the yang of it.

And we have to work together if we want to build something greater than the sum of its parts. So that’s what I focus on. I focus on that. I just want to do my job the best of my ability. Now, if you’re an expert marketer, cool and you’re watching this great, take some of these ideas and go run with it. But if you’re more of the business owner or the sale, usually you’re the lead salesperson, and you have a sales team. Why are you making them do all this marketing work instead of selling? If your unique ability is the communication and the selling and the customer service and problem-solving, your unique ability is helping people improve their lives and their situation. Stick to that and get better and better at sales.

Let a guy like me get better and better at marketing. We both could probably do both, but if we stay in our lane and work together, we’re going to be able to create a unique ability framework, teamwork. So I think that’s awesome. I’m gonna give you a bonus card today. Unique ability teamwork. By the way, if you’re listening right now to this on the podcast and you’re not watching, I’m just sitting here and I’m basically just talking through these cards and there’s only a couple of points on them and one of them is go to www.getleadsfirst.com especially if you’re a real estate agent. And you can also click around to other parts of my website if you want and see what we do within market targeting.

But I’ve got a special seller lead program there. All right, so the unique ability teamwork, this leads into unique ability teamwork. By the way, Dan Sullivan from Strategic Coach talks a lot about this. This is his baby. Definitely check them out, buy all their stuff. It’s amazing. All right. A great synergy in a team requires everybody having a right seat on the bus and doing the thing that they’re best at, that they enjoy doing, that they get energy from and not doing the things that they don’t enjoy or get energy from and cooperatively working together to create that synergy. That is unique ability teamwork. You are fantastic at sales. If you’re watching this and you are real estate agent, mortgage broker or another entrepreneur, small business owner, you’re awesome at sales, or you’re trying to get better at sales, you need to, right?

It’s the lifeblood of your business. So I’m awesome at testing. I don’t say I’m awesome at marketing. There are no awesome, amazing, incredible marketers. Really, it’s a really amazing tester because that’s all we do. We don’t really know until we test, right? But the more we focus on strengths, the better we get. And the more you focus on sales, the better you get. The more I focused on marketing to help you, the better we get together, and we can create something better by working together. That’s the main point I want to hit. Let’s keep going. Card number four mindset. This training, by the way, came from when I met with these mortgage brokers and decided to help them with a lot of their process in their business. Hi Raymond. Looks like Raymond’s watching. Good to see you, buddy. Hope you’re doing well.

I have another Facebook live on my personal page that’s a little bit more exciting than this one may be. It’s different. This one’s all about my help with the business, small businesses. So glad to have you though, bud. So mindset. All right, so I’m talking about the mindset when it comes to small business, especially if you’re doing sales and you’re trying to get new customers. Well, it’s always easier to be skeptical, jaded and grizzled. It’s always easier. It’s so easy. So when you’re looking at the world through this framework, and you’re thinking, man, I need to get, I need to hustle, I need to get something going. It’s easy to look at all of the options out there, especially in the world of marketing and lead generation. It’s easy to look at that and go, it didn’t work.

I tried that once. It’ll never work again, and you got to avoid that. I really believe that it’s harder to have faith in the process, but it’s better. It’s harder, it’s easier to be jaded, it’s harder to have faith in the process. This goes for all of life, right? So if you know a process works, you have to push yourself a little bit to stick with it long enough to really find out whether it works or not. And if it’s worked for other people, I believe it can work for you too. Okay. Now, quick story. I had a client, an attorney-client, and in 30 days we got them 18 leads and one case out of it. Now, I don’t know about you, those numbers may or may not impress you, but what that meant was, is the attorneys got a new case. Now, the average personal injury case could be worth 10, 20, $30,000 of revenue of fees to an attorney.

That’s a lot of money. But they had to want to work and make those phone calls. So going back to my original point, you have to want to work. You have , so I can tee up leads and, or you could have all these systems, but you have to want to make the phone calls. I don’t know if they really wanted to, but they were happy when they got one. So that example is an interesting one because the money was there for them, but I don’t know if they really wanted it that bad. Let me give you another example. Here’s one where a real estate agent. No, sorry. 32 Pearls. Love these guys. If you’re in Seattle or Tacoma and you’re looking for a dentist, check out 32pearls.com.

My buddy Mike owns those practices. Amazing. And they do a great job. Really Nice people. And they just renovated like the Tacoma office. Beautiful. And the Seattle ones down on the water. It’s very, very cool. Cool area. They started on February 2nd with lead generation. We’ve got them 209; actually, this was a couple of days old now, a couple of days ago, we had 209 leads for them, and they already turned 22 of them in the patients. That’s a pretty good return on investment. That’s a pretty good, pretty good return. Now a lot of those people are just getting teeth cleanings, whatnot. But later some of them will get more work done, and their attitude was, they were kind of too busy to do like perfect follow up, but they were still following up, and they’re really making an effort, and I know that they appreciate that. And so again, it’s, they have to have a followup system.

They’ve got to get leads and then they got to do the work, and they’re doing it, and now they’ve got new patients. So it’s straightforward. This is not Rocket Science guys. The third one, He’s a real estate agent up in Bellingham, Washington. Alison, cool gal, by the way, if you’re up in Bellingham, contact Allison Fisher, she’s a really cool real estate agent, works for The Muljat Group. I don’t know how to pronounce that correctly. Sorry if I butchered it. But in the first five days, they got 40 leads through lead generation system, and she had three appointments, phone call, visit. I kind of think, well that’s a big deal when their seller leads and they’re looking to sell their home that they could be a listing. All it takes is one here for that to be a fascinating deal.

Now did she have to call 40? Yeah. Yup. But we also have text message and email and other ways to follow up with those people and to screen and to filter through. So, but A.), did she have a follow-up system? Yes, we have a CRM called Follow Up Boss works great. I highly recommend it. The next thing is, is she actually got the leads. We worked with her to get her the leads. And third is she was willing to make the calls. I’m trying to hit myself over a hit over the head with a hammer here just to say, look how easy it is. Fundamental, simple, simple, simple. By the way, if you’re wondering why I’m wearing this silly, get up, got just got done working out and I want to make a video for you and if you’re just tuning in and you’re curious to learn more about what we do for small businesses, go to stoddardagency.com or if you’re a real estate agent, you definitely want to check out our seller leads program.

It’s a fantastic video that I made for you that shows you exactly how to do it. You don’t even have to give your email, there’s, you don’t even have to opt-in for anything, and it’s at getleadsfirst.com. First, because you need leads before your sales processes worth anything. And second, because you want to get it to at first before your competitors. All right. So finally, I used to do booth and networking groups a lot. And what I found is that, I would do a booth, I talked to some people and I would just feel like it’s not worth it. You know, like I got a couple of customers and some people to follow up with, but it seems like drudgery. Well, I did it for a long time and I did fairly okay with it.

And then like a year or so but this other guy who was doing it with John, he just kept doing it and they later called them The Booth Daddy because he did so many booths. But here’s what happened when I kind of fizzled out with them in a previous business, I was in a direct sales company. I’m. Actually, I’m still with that. I just didn’t, haven’t done booths in a while. I’m going to do one on Friday. I shouldn’t say previous. It’s just a different business. I kind of fizzled out with it. And my buddy kept doing it and a couple of years later he had built out this huge paycheck because he had built a pretty large part of his business from that. Same with networking groups. I did a networking group, like Be An Island, Le Tip for four years.

I still have some great friends, customers, clients from that. But at the time it felt like this is not happening fast enough. And so basically I kind of got out of that group and then somebody else filled my spot and I couldn’t get back in. Darn it. Now meanwhile, my other buddy who kept doing networking groups and never quit, he turns around and has like a giant business. I think he’s making it an additional, I can’t quote numbers here, but it’s a large income because of his time there and a large like ridiculous. And I’m looking at it going, oh, I should have stuck with it. So I know that has nothing to do with online lead generation, but I wanted to bring those as another example of other lead generation that you have to stick with the process. You have to A.), have a follow-up system ready to go for longterm followup B.) You’ve got to have the system will little booths and the networking meetings count, but then C.) You gotta be willing to do the work and stick with it for the long haul.

Stop looking for the short term quick fix. Start Looking for the longterm success path. All right guys, that’s card number four. I’m gonna continue next time with card number five and six, and they’re the best ones. I’m going to talk about strategy and sales system, so if you enjoy it, if you got anything out of this today, please leave a comment. I love comments, questions, I would love to answer them. And the go to Get Leads First. You can also go to Stoddard Agency for general information about what we do. I will talk to you guys next time. Have a great day. Take care.

]]>How To Get a Better Response from Your Real Estate Seller Leadshttps://stoddardagency.com/how-to-get-a-better-response-from-your-real-estate-seller-leads/
Wed, 10 Apr 2019 05:58:35 +0000https://stoddardagency.com/?p=1264As a real estate agent, you must have a new lead generation system that produces high-quality leads using in-market targeting. This new type of lead generation system targets the top 3% of the sales funnel, those who are looking and ready to buy—they are the needles in the haystack. One popular method is simply to use Facebook’s AI, using custom audiences to create look-like matching audiences. This allows us to find these creme de la cremes of real estate seller leads. Today I am teaching you strategies on how to get a better response from your leads, increase conversions, and lower client acquisition costs.
How to Get a Better Lead Response from your Real Estate Seller Leads

InMarket Targeting for Real Estate Seller Leads

Hey guys, Jesse Stoddard here doing another Facebook live on the old Stoddard Agency page. So I wanted to give you all an update on how to get a better response from your leads and your lead generation efforts. I’ve got a great story for you today. Yesterday I was hanging out with my buddy Phil at North Pacific Mortgage, whose a client of mine. I did some marketing work for them, created a video, help them with their website, that review generation or review requests and managing reviews and listings and all the boring backend technical SEO stuff and did a little bit of that stuff, to help them out, get the foundation. However, that’s not the cool part. The cool part is when we started the lead generation process. Right now we’re using Facebook and getting pretty darn good results of that. We use in market targeting data, which means that we get lists of the people that are actually in the market, to begin with.

So we didn’t bother showing ads to people that are a waste of time. We do the look-like matching audiences through Facebook’s AI after that, we use AI to analyze data, put it in Facebook, Facebook’s algorithm works to make it, to expand that audience and boom, it’s a great two one punch. It’s a lot different from any other lead gen. If you’re interested in lead generation, help by the way, and especially if you’re a real estate agent or if you’re in the real estate industry, go to http://getleadsfirst.com. Get leads first because you need leads first before anything happens. Also, you want to get to them first before your competitors. So it’s getleadsfirst.com. If you want general help or you’re another kind of business, then at http://stoddardagency.com.

By the way, either link will take you to the same place cause you can go through the menu and find stuff. So, all right, now to the story. So I go to the office yesterday to http://www.npacificmortgage.com, cool guys in Bothell. If you’re looking for a mortgage or refinance, go to those guys. They’re outstanding. They’re very professional, and they know their stuff. You know, a lot more than me. I don’t know anything about it. I don’t get it. They know how to get the rate, shop around and get good rates. It’s not just about the rates; it’s about the service though in the speed because you can shop rates and end up with just a horrendous process. I was through it years ago, been through a horrendous process with a bank. It was terrible.

So, would rather skip all that. I don’t care if I say .003% or something. It’s not worth it. I’d rather have really, really good service and really fast and painless. So those guys are fantastic for that. Well, I’m sitting down with them cause I’m saying, hey guys, I’ve got this new lead generation system, and it works. We’re using Facebook right now; we might use some other platforms in the future. We’re not stuck with anyone platforms. Very cool. Also, what we’re doing is we are running, we’re taking data in market targeting data, and we’re running it in a particular way with Facebook. I get into that on my page. If you want to know all the details, go to getleadsfirst.com, and I explain it all. Then basically we get somebody to fill out a form who’s looking for more information.

So these guys are trying to wrap their minds around it, and they think it sounds cool, but they are a little skeptical. We tried to leads in the past, we’ve done the Zillow, we’ve done the CINC, we’ve done the Boomtown, we’ve done the whatever, all these companies. It’s just garbage. There’s just a lot of, I mean, it’s not terrible. I’m not saying that those companies are bad, I’m just saying that they didn’t have a good experience with those companies in terms of the quality of the lead. They follow up with a hundred of them, and you don’t even get one. I mean that’s no fun. So at the same time, the owner, Phil, he sits down with us, and he says, oh, by the way, we just got one. Like we just, we got a loan out.

It was the sixth lead of our mind that came in, and that looks pretty good to the loan officers. Now they’re like, what? You know, it must be a fluke. I said, well, may or may not be. I mean, I don’t expect results that fast. It might take a little time, but we’re using this data, and we’re doing a good process, that does make a difference. Whom you put in front of and what you say does make a difference. It’s not just the ad, the fact that you have an ad, it’s quality. So might make a difference. I’m just saying. So they get this one and not only is this six lead that comes in there or not? No, sorry, it was the ninth, I think it was technically the ninth.

It’s still within like the first handful of real estate seller leads, the first couple of days and barely been doing it a week. The gal is ready to go, loan application. I don’t know how much it was for; I think he said $500,000, don’t quote me on that. However, she wants to do the process and then she’s looking for a realtor and because of the positioning, not only of our ads and because of this first person being in market and wanting help now and the mortgage company being very good at helping people now and being on top of it.

Strategies on How Maximize Your Real Estate Leads

1.) The way you get a better response from your reak estate seller leads is you call them fast.

You can use automation like texts and email. That’s great. That fills in the gaps, and it makes sure that nothing falls through. Like in case you’re in a meeting, and you can’t get to him, but whenever you can, get somebody on a phone call. Studies show and I’ve got a great study if you need to you can put, “send me the study” in the comments here or something and I can send you a link to the study that they did with millions.

I mean this is a major, number of participants in this process with lots of different leads, so it’s statistically relevant. Now happened to be for the testing for enrollment in a school like a college program, but it applies to almost everything. It was the speed of that first call or calls and how you follow up, and they show that if you follow up within one to five minutes of somebody filling out a form requesting information, your closing percentage goes up nearly 400%. That’s a big deal by the way. They did some other study where they called somebody like several times in the first few hours, and then they laid off them. They waited a few days and did a little bit more. They showed the whole process, and there’s cool when to call when to email when to text.

It was immaculate. So I’d model it if I were you. Were starting to model that too with the mortgage company. Again, just if you’re curious to see how I do all of this stuff, go to getleadsfirst.com. I go through the whole thing in terms of the lead generation process, if you wanted to follow up a system and write in the comments that you want me to send you the report on how to follow up and I will, I’ll send you that link. I’ll put it in the comments at some point. All right, now, while they’re sitting there. Now here’s the second part of that story, which is even cooler and I’m going go backtrack a little bit.

The whole reason that my buddy Phil, one of these leads, yes, they want to grow their business, but it had a different secondary purpose. He wanted to get enough to where he could send real estate seller leads to real estate agents and real estate brokers. So here’s why. Typically in the business, the real estate agents send most of the leads to the broker. So it doesn’t go the other way around very often. Because the agent gets the first contact and then they say, hey, you need to get pre-qualified. You know, and we need to get you to work with the guy on my team or gal on my team, and they’re cool. So then they tried it, that referral and it’s harder. It’s not impossible, but it doesn’t happen as often for the mortgage broker to send them to the agent.

However, the agents always want referrals back from them. So what Phil wanted is he wanted the opportunity to send more referrals to his partner agents or new agents so that they feel that stronger bond and want to send even more back his way. Well so cool. Cause this lady wanted help, and he hooked him up with his partner. A real estate agent who’s an excellent agent follows up fast. Again important, right? The fast followup. If he did not, he did. Oh my gosh. I’m getting a text. “First lead in called within about a minute.” Oh my. That’s from the guy I’m talking about. So this is the other part of this story is that the agent is also my client. So my client is getting a lead that day from a lead that I produced for the mortgage broker who sent to him.

He’s sending, oh my gosh, I’ve got one of your leads. However, it wasn’t even for me. So now the lady wants to buy the day, and they put, they put two different offers out already and today and it might come even close. So he just sent me a text. I wonder if I can see the text without losing the line with that. So that’s cool. That’s cool. I love that. I love that. I’m going to get to him in a second here. So the lesson again is follow up fast. Also, the second lesson, I don’t know if you picked up on it, is to make sure you have referral partners ready to go. Not just any referral partner. You need to have a power partner who knows their job, and they have to be able to follow it fast. The speed to the lead is the key.

I need to come up with a better rhyme. But the speed to the lead, it leads to being free. I don’t know. That’s dorky. Got to come up with some better. If you can come up with something better, leave it in the comments for me. So that the lessons there is speed to lead is huge. The followup system matters. Leave in the comments if you want more detail on that. Also, having a referral partner who’s good at what they do, provides value plus great customer service, but most importantly, speed to the lead, right? Moreover, he’s also willing to be fast. That is what my Buddy Ryan did. That’s why they got, and the confidence that instills because here’s somebody that you think about this from. If you’re looking to buy or sell a home, if you’re looking to buy anything for that matter, I mean it doesn’t matter.

You can be looking to fix your roof. You’d be looking for a new dentist. It doesn’t matter. Think about it, if you’re online and you’re searching, especially if we know how this is a little extra trick with the in-market targeting data. We know that you’re doing this for a while and you’ve gotten to the point where you’re red hot ready, and you’re in that 3% of any market who’s ready to buy the top little bit of the pyramid. Whereas 97% quite aren’t ready. There’s 30% don’t even care, aren’t even looking, and another 30% is curious, but they’re just hemming and hawing and kicking tires and then there’s a little bit more that are getting close. Then there’s like 3% that already, so you know who those people already show ads to them.

You think you’re more likely or less likely to get a response, a better response or a lower quality response. Now, if you’re an ad person and you’re used to this stuff, do you think your cost per click, your advertising cost is going to be higher or lower? If it’s in that top 3% the answer is, and put it in the comments, but you probably guessed it. It’s lower. Yeah, because Facebook and Google are relevancy engines, which means that they want to show an ad they want to show content to people who engage with it and if no one engages it, it kind of looks like, well it’s not as exciting. I’m not going to show it as much. Alternatively, if it’s an advertisement that you’re paying for, it’s going to cost you more to get them to engage. So that’s the keyword.

So if you are already putting your ads in front of people that are interested in beginning with, chances are they’re going to engage with that ad, which means that you’re going to get a lower cost per click and Facebook’s going to reward you by showing it even more often. So we’re starting with that. See the advantage here and then on top of that, if that person truly is in the top 3% like they’re like ready? Well if you’re right there and then now look it on the sales side, we get the form fill and then someone’s immediate with pleasant, not harassing, right? We’re not talking shark sales here, but just pleasant, friendly, helpful and right there and confident, well, what do you think’s going to happen? I would rather-everybody instead work with someone friendly and helpful that they trust, that is confident.

So if they say, well, you know, I think I might go with this real estate agent or that one and then you come in and say, well, I’ve got the perfect guy or gal for you that you need to use. Let’s see, or the mortgage broker and they can get this done quick, and they’re the best negotiator I’ve ever seen. Well, the chances are that person’s going to go, Geez, maybe I won’t go with my brother in law who barely does it part-time and doesn’t know what he’s doing. You know, maybe I will go. I mean, or they’re just ready to go no matter what. So that’s what happened here. It goes over to the real estate and real estate agents. Like I can help you with confidence. Now here’s another thing that happens. Sometimes that person’s second-guessing they got a loan out, but they haven’t closed the deal quite yet with the loan officer.

But the real estate agents like, Hey, no, you got to go with those guys. They’re great. I’ve worked with him for a long time. Here are the results they get. Here’s how great their customer services and they’re effective and they’re probably going to get you approved faster than just about anyone else because they’re going to go the extra mile. Well, guess what? They did that. They did go that extra mile did get the approval. Now the real estate agent has reinforced that, that you know that decision after the fact of going with the loan officer, kind of like sometimes people get that buyer’s remorse thing or something after we’re whatever. Well, now we’ve reinforced that was a right decision. So now the real estate agent is sending love back to the mortgage broker. Now it has to be justified. You wouldn’t want to use this to manipulate people in the wrong way.

You wouldn’t want to refer somebody. That’s terrible. So this is assuming I’m assuming that you’re good at what you do and you believe in what you do and you’re sending referral partners to people that, that know what they’re doing. I’ve got another text “Sean voicemails recording uploaded.” Okay, so then these are, that’s the mortgage guy’s texting me on this phone going, hey, we’re ready. We did all of our stuff. We’re prepared with the followups in as leads. So they’re itching for more. That’s awesome. Okay, so you, I think you understand there are many lessons here. Number one is targeting is essential and, and lead gen is brought in. By the way, if you want help with that, go, especially if you’re in real estate, go to getleadsfirst.com. Getleadsfirst.

First, because you want to get leads first before any sales process is going to be valuable to you because you’ve got to get leads to the practice it on. So he’d at-bats and a baseball season. My son’s in baseball couldn’t help that little analogy. It’s just like their at-bats got to get out. The other reason its getsleadsfirst.com is that you want to get there first before competitors because we know that anybody who gets them who’s quality, who’s good at what they do, that’s assuming that you are. But what sets you apart from others? They don’t know if anything sets you apart, so that’s why you need to be there first. You’re going to get there before competitors because that way you can show what you can give them your value proposition first and more frequently and by the way, you can do it at a lower cost because you know who they are, to begin with. The needles in the haystack if you want that go to getleadsfirst.com.

2.) Also, then the other lesson is to make sure you have not only speed, but you have a good referral partner.

I’ll call it a team because what if the person’s on the phone and they say, you know what, I need an insurance quote and you’re like, what does that have to do with what I do? Well, if you have somebody in there ready to go and they’re good, and you can vouch for them, and they won’t let you down, that’s the other thing. Got to be careful whom you trust with that you’ve got to know that they’re going to do a good job. Then you’ve got that incredible synergy, and it’s not a greed thing. It’s a giving thing because you’re helping the customer, you’re helping the client to solve problems. I want that. We all want as a client like if I want to go on by seller home or something, I want to work with the best that know the area that I’m going to, that specific neighborhoods or regions and they have friends that can help with my problems.

The last thing I want to do is deal with problems. We all have enough problems. I want solutions, and that’s how you do that. You’re fast, confident and you have great friends that can help you as a team to solve problems. That’s it for today guys. I’m so excited about this. I’ll keep following up with the results. That one is just one example among many and again, if you want to know more about this, go to http://getleadsfirst.com, and I explained it all for real estate agents. This is the seller leads program, and if you’re another kind of business or that you know, you don’t care about the real estate thing, go to http://stoddardagency.com. That’s, that’s the general link. If you’re listening to this, which I’m probably hoping some people are listening and not just watching maybe on the podcast, for example, a season one was all about attorneys. Now, this is season two, and I’m kind of if you notice I’m focusing more on real estate, so, it’s kind of exciting. So, all right guys, take care. We’ll talk to you soon.

]]>How To Generate Real Estate Seller Leadshttps://stoddardagency.com/how-to-generate-real-estate-seller-leads/
Tue, 02 Apr 2019 00:51:23 +0000https://stoddardagency.com/?p=1211Create Your Own Lead Generation System Without Depending on Zillow, Redfin, Trulia, CINC, Realtor.com, Boomtown And Other Powerful Suppliers Who Are Trying to Put You Out of Business

If you are a real estate agent or broker, you should know that Zillow, Realtor.com, Redfin, and other directory and review sites are trying to put you out of business. It’s a bold statement, but since Zillow started buying houses direct from the owners and selling it a premium, real estate agents who use the platform for lead generation is now facing a fierce competitor, the platform itself. Unless they learn to generate their real estate seller leads, real estate agents will be devoured by the giant beast that is Zillow that they have been feeding for years.

Hey guys, Jesse here. I want to make sure you can hear me. I’m doing Facebook lives today, still not quite used to it. It’s a very cool technology. Today I want talk to you about how Zillow and Home Advisor and all of the review sites are trying to put you out of business. I know that’s a crazy bold statement to make, but, I believe it’s true. Today I was just on the Internet, and over the last two years, there’ve been more and more headlines. It’s about the league, for example, Zillow, getting into the real estate game and offering listings. Some people think it’s the death knell; it’s going to be like the end of real estate agents. I don’t think that’s precisely true, but I think that they are trying, and that’s the natural progression of these things.

I’ve been saying this for years, Home Advisor, which bought Angie’s list. If you don’t know Home Advisor, you’re probably not in the home services line of work. They’re so big, they bought Angie’ List, which is giant, and Angie’s happy. What they do is they essentially get the consumer to go on and leave reviews and leave comments and rate nothing new there. Then the idea is you think, well, how do they make money? If you’re a consumer, you don’t think about these things. If you’re a business owner, you know exactly how they make money. They come to you and say, would you like to buy leads or would you like to purchase ad space, all of these companies, basically the same business model. But what happens when they begin to get more popular, and they have more inventory of leads?

Well now they can begin being more selective, and they can charge higher rates. They become a dominant supplier to you. You have two options. You can join them, or you could avoid it. What most realtors do for, an example of Zillow, a lot of them tried to stay away from it for a while, and some people jump on board and, but eventually, you have no choice because all of the leads are going there. All of the people go there, and now you have to get in line, like in the bread line to get your hand out, and you got to pay your money. Also, then on top of that, what do they do? Well, they sell it to multiple realtors. It’s the same thing with Home Advisor and other several companies. So they’re making money hand over fist on selling the lead numerous times.

Is the quality of the lead good? Maybe, maybe not. Often not. With Zillow, pretty decent, but now you’ve got a situation where you’re paying for a supplier to get more potent as time goes on. They had more strength, and you keep paying them money every month you give them a fee. So we’re a whole bunch of other realtors given Zillow fee, they get more and more powerful. They can build out their IT and infrastructure. They can use machine learning, which I’m a big proponent of, which you can do yourself. If your with an agency like ours, by the way, if you’re interested in getting leads and taking back power from these dominant suppliers then click here because you need to get leads first to be effective with your sales strategy, to grow your business.

Of course, it all starts with the lead. Second, you want to get to the lead first before your competitors. So it’s getleadsfirst.com. So as you pay them more money, they then become more powerful. Now on top of selling the lead to additional times, then they can say, well, we won’t sell it to other realtors if you buy this territory. Now you’re going to pay a premium. So now you’ve got a situation where you’ve got to pay them even more money if you want to stay on the top of their list. It’s a beautiful strategy. Don’t you wish you were in that business? Well, I have a bone to pick with them. I’m a big proponent of small business. I believe America was based and built on small business and therefore I want to support small business.

I feel it’s vital. So my whole mission in my agency is to take back power from these suppliers and give it back to you. Give it back to the small business. I’m a small business owner. I’ve been a small business owner my whole life. I know what it’s like to be in the trenches. I’ve read all the same self-help books you guys have, “How to Win Friends and Influence People” and the Think and Grow Rich books and Zig Ziglar books and yes starting from the trenches and sales and building my way up. I know what that’s like now. I am not a realtor by the way. I did get my license about 15 or 20 years ago, and I never did anything with it. That shows you I probably shouldn’t be one. I’m not trying to take your business; I don’t want your business.

We need to band together to create more of our opportunities. Even if you use Zillow or if you’re a contractor and use a Home Advisor, fine, but always be building your lead generation on top of that. In addition to that and continuously be finding ways to improve your lead generation. So good that you don’t need the Zillows and the Home Advisors of the world. How would you like to do that? If you want help doing that? By the way, go to getleadsfirst.com, and I will show you, we have an in-market targeting program right now. I’m very excited about what we’re doing. We work with a variety of different clients. Everything from my buddy who’s a dentist, has two dental practices, getting him over a hundred leads in the last month and a half. We’ve got a mortgage company that’s just coming on board.

I’ll do shout outs for these guys are very cool. However, right now I’m not sure if they want me mentioning them in my videos, but I’ll find out. I should; I do want to, I don’t want everybody calling him either. We’re just getting them, and I’ve got a couple of real estate brokers agents. I think that’s so weird how you used to be brokers and agents make total sense and now they’re all brokers. But now there are managing brokers. You guys live in an amazingly exciting world. Not as bad as mortgage, more regulation there. Zillow for years has to please their shareholders, it was inevitable. They don’t owe anything to the realtors. Although you thought they did. Cause you were a part of what made them work. They could sell you lead and eventually what are they going to do?

They’re just going to sell the property and find a way to get that commission. So they want to sell the property, and they’re already experimenting, and it’s only going to expand from there. Now there’s much debate about whether or not they’re ever going to put a realtor out of business. There may always need to be a human being there, possibly, but they’re looking for ways. So that’s the point. Also, by the way, if you have an opinion on this, please comment below. I’d love to hear your opinion, especially if you’re a realtor. It’s not just Zillow though. I mean, Dave Ramsey, cool guy, excellent radio program. I listened to it for a couple of years straight. He gives that referral fee, charges a referral fee and a monthly fee, and also has multiple realtors that they’ll tell about that they’ll advertise a Zillow, Trulia, sync realtor.com, Boomtown.

Problems with Real Estate Seller Leads from Zillow, Home Advisor and other Review Sites

Those are a few of them. If you’ve worked with these, what are the big problems?

1.) The quality is not always there.

2.) It seems like you’re just throwing your money away, which is related to quality.

3.) They’re giving them to other realtors most of the time unless you pay a premium. Sometimes they sell them over and over again, which is annoying when you try to call someone in for other realtors have called them at the same time. It’s ridiculous. It feels like a waste of your time.

4.) You’ve got to continually feed that beast if you want to keep it going and you’re going to need additional help, you got to get all technical. You’ve got to get a CRM system to help follow up the leads. Cause you know, we have a long sales cycle for most of us. If you’re a service-based business, you’re a realtor, and usually, there’s technology, you’ve got to have somebody to call them all the time.

So if you’re interested in finding solutions for all of these things, creating your lead generation, and beating a Zillow at their own game. In other words, getting in front of them and getting your ads or your information out in front of them and front of the competitors like Zillow, so that you can get to them sooner and also a way that you may be able to do it, without risk. Also have a system for followup and also have a system for calling.

You get the cream of the crop if you’re interested in learning more about how to do that and what we do. Just go to getleadsfirst.com and apply. I’ve got a website up there. I don’t even right now have all of this realtor specific stuff by the way, but this applies to several different business verticals. Contact us, and we have a little application. I have to ask some questions to make sure that we’re a good fit and then I’d be happy to help you. We’ll find out if it’s a good fit or not. If you’re not a realtor this still, we have a lot of different verticals that we could do this in right now though. What’s fancy for the realtors as I can, we can produce seller leads, and that was the other, I think I mentioned four or five.

5.) Typically you get a hodgepodge of leads through these leads programs which haven’t been screened. You don’t even know how they got them half the time. Sometimes you do right where they click a looky-loo, but on top of that, they’re primarily buyers. You know, they’re thinking about buying a home for some home buyers. The market has quite a few options for buyer leads, very few for seller leads, people that want to list.

And as you know, as a realtor, that’s the most valuable one because if you take a buyer to a home and they don’t get the deal, then you don’t get paid or they decide not to buy. However, a seller wants the list selling that home, and it doesn’t matter which buyer comes. You get your commission. So I’m trying to focus a little bit more on seller leads, and we’re getting outstanding results.

Averages right now, are four listings a month to start. Also, by the way, if you’re interested in that and you want to learn more about it, we do have an application process. I only work with one per zip code. That’s on purpose cause I can’t be working with competitors. We do not sell the leads to anybody else. They are yours to do with, and we build a partnership out of it. I have a no-risk option. There is a refundable deposit for that, but there is a no-risk option where if you don’t feel like our leads are any good and you don’t close any sales, you get your money back, which is unheard of. I don’t think of anybody else in my industry that’s doing that. So if you want to know more about it, go to getleadsfirst.com.

Thank you, guys. I hope it’s been somewhat informative today. I guess if I had to boil it down to some main points, it’s this, all of these companies that offer you the lead generation, typical website, you know, software as a service company, SAAS companies, and the review sites and they’re all similar, all wrapped into one. Our businesses profiting off of you and the end consumer in some instances, but mostly from you. So as soon as they get big enough and powerful enough, they’re trying to get rid of you because you are the middle man for them. Also, I hate to say it, but that is the reality of the world we live in. So every month that you’re paying them, you are feeding that beast. Let’s take some power back from them, put it back in your pocket. As a small business owner, let’s build a relationship among small business owners that empowers us because we’re the ones that are making this country one small business at a time. I’m Jesse again. I hope you enjoyed this and if you had one more information on what I do to help real estate brokers and agents, click here.

]]>Marketing Best Practices Ranthttps://stoddardagency.com/marketing-best-practices-rant/
Fri, 08 Mar 2019 06:59:13 +0000https://stoddardagency.com/?p=1084How Short Term Marketing Best Practices Can Kill Your Law Firm In the Long Run

I am going to take a brief moment to rant about marketing and advertising best practices as a general concept and philosophy. This is actually something that I get fired up about more frequently nowadays and I hope you’ll forgive me if I step up onto ye old soapbox for a moment to address my concerns with you attorneys.

In fact, I feel that most attorneys, mortgage brokers, real estate agents, and small business owners in general, do anything they can to shortcut proven systems. In other words, if it is a best practice—the thing that you probably ought to be doing to benefit your business with proper marketing—then you tend to avoid it. An example could be something like paying for leads using advertising platforms such as Adwords or Facebook Pay Per Click. Let’s say best practices are,

A.) DO advertise to the best of your ability,

B.) Optimize, and

C.) Follow up with your leads.

I have found many that just aren’t willing to do the fundamentals that grow their business because they make excuses like, “I’ve tried that before and it didn’t work.” So I ask them,

A.) “What kind of advertising did you do or what kind of leads did you buy?” and then

B.) “Did you split test the ads, or otherwise work to improve them once you had data from the initial trials?”

C.) “How well did you work the leads immediately when you received them?” and finally,

D.) “Did you have a followup system beyond the initial 10 days? Did you send them text messages, emails, postcards, birthday cards, thank-you cards, or include them in retargeting for six months, a year, two, or even three years? Did you have that system in place when you bought your leads or paid for advertising to get leads?”

“No? You don’t know? You didn’t really think carefully about any of those things? You never bothered testing or tweaking anything and you only tried it once for a month because you are too impatient to even think twice about it? Okay, well maybe that might have something to do with it.”

There are no expert marketers. Only expert testers. If you are not testing, then you aren’t a marketer. You need to go back to being a lawyer and hire people who will do the testing for you.

Instead, they say “We only do what all the other attorneys are doing, because it’s just how things are done.” I find that the activities that qualify in the mind of the lawyers as status quo marketing behaviors that “work” for them (they delude themselves into thinking) are the short-term, quick-fix instant gratification type “name-rank-serial-number” marketing which is what everyone else is doing and that feeds their lazy habits and creates a self-perpetuating feedback loop.

They like to see themselves on billboards (I am not saying that under certain conditions billboards can’t work), but they don’t want to experiment online, even though that is where everyone is. Case in point, you are most likely reading this article online, and I don’t have a billboard. They get on the billboard and they pay for a fancy website, and all the other attorneys leave them alone, so they feel fine about it, and they’d rather avoid the discomfort of looking foolish in front of other attorneys, rather than find something wildly profitable. Being different is too risky, so they’d rather settle for mediocrity.

Unfortunately, this boring me-too marketing is stuff that they’re willing to pay for over and over again, often because it just seems like everyone else is and they avoid being criticized by the other lawyers at the association meetings. Sadly, those other lawyers do not pay your bills and frankly don’t care about your business.

Another ridiculous example I see all over the industry is that nearly everybody is paying their digital agency seven-thousand dollars a month because lawyers are all vying for a bigger and badder website with bigger pictures of the partners prominently displayed on the main page.

True, prospects and even referrals will go to your website and check out your online reviews in their research phase, but if you’re really trying to grow your business, you need to do everything imaginable to reach your ideal prospect before your competitors so they even make it to your website in the first place.

The only way to bring in more and better clients to produce revenue consistently is to get new people in the digital door (i.e. to find your digital billboard in the desert means to get people to be aware of you before your competitors so that you are in the running, can be seen, can be considered, and start the conversation). If you aren’t doing everything to be first, then it doesn’t matter how fancy your website is because the prospect already signed with another attorney.

So if it’s best practice to pay for ads or pay for leads, why aren’t you paying for them? “Well, we haven’t had luck in the past when we tried it that one time.” Over what period did you thoroughly test, what method, what source, and how did you adjust your approach to get a better result before giving up? Did you bother to determine what your ROI is long term on the leads, or did you give up after a month or two when you didn’t get immediate payback? If you want to be a successful lawyer and build a truly profitable longstanding law firm, you have to stop playing the short-term game and start playing the long-term winning game.

Stop playing not to lose and start playing to win.

Another example is the typical law firm’s (lack of) videos on social media. I hear things like, “Well, I would do it. I heard it’s good, but I don’t want to do it.” Why? “I don’t like being in front of a camera and I don’t like being on social media and I don’t like posting anything,” he says.

Well, find somebody to help you then! Stop asking “How?” and starting asking the more powerful question, “Who?”

None of this would drive me nuts if on the very next call the attorneys didn’t turn right around and complain about not having enough growth. “We just don’t have the growth that we want. We’re not getting enough new clients. We’re too busy with all of this logistic garbage, and we’re not making any more money, and it seems like we’re spending more, but we’re not making more… blah, blah, blah.”

The truth is, if you don’t do the things that will set you apart from the crowd, if you don’t get to the leads before the other law firm, and you aren’t first, then you are going to get to those leads 2nd, 3rd, or even last. If you are only capturing 3% of your market share, you are NEVER going to capture 4% by getting to the people who are looking for an attorney in any position other than first. That’s why a few firms end up dominating a market. Are you going to be one of them, or are you going to fight for table scraps?

If it’s a best practice, you’ve got to do it. Figure out how to do it and how to afford it, and then figure out how to make your lead generation efforts actually pay for themselves. It’s not whether or not to do it, it’s how to do it, how to make it work, and make it pay for itself and profit from it over the long haul.

At Stoddard Agency, we take pains to make sure we are not only helping you grow your business quickly, but profitably. We understand it’s not how much money you make, but how much money you keep that is the ultimate measuring tool for your firm’s success. For a free discovery call, email us at support.stoddardagency.com or contact us at: https://stoddardagency.com/contact/ .

]]>Why You Must Use Video Marketing for your Law Firmhttps://stoddardagency.com/why-you-must-use-video-marketing-for-your-law-firm/
Wed, 06 Mar 2019 19:59:43 +0000https://stoddardagency.com/?p=1070(And How To Create One Without Hating The Experience Or Being Stricken With Stage Fright)

Are you one of the personal injury attorneys who cringe at the thought of talking in front of the camera? Well, you should muster the courage to do video marketing for your law firm as research shows that it increases revenues an average of 300%. Watch this YouTube video for tips on how you can be a natural in front of the camera and create a compelling video to promote your business.

Why You Should Use Video Marketing For Your Law FirmWhy Video Marketing is Essential for Law Firms

Hey guys, it’s Jesse here again, another drive-time marketing talk. So I met with a client today, and we shot video, and we had a blast.

I wanted to share with you how to not let video freak you out. I’ve had clients that say, “I hate video, I don’t want to be on video. I’m no good in front of the camera. I’m terrible, I freeze up, or I look stupid or all that”. I’ve gotten pretty good at sitting behind the camera, like a director and helping people to do better in front of the camera. I found out a couple of things, vital things that make all the difference. Number one is you just have to stop talking negatively about yourself and stop using the negative self-talk because that’s defeating before you begin.

It sounds like common sense, but I bet you’re guilty of that more often than you think that you’re willing to admit. Number two, people want to connect with real people. So I know that this is not a professional video and it’s kind of silly and I’m driving and all that. But you know, I am going just to tell you the truth as I see it from my point of view. I’m doing this extemporaneously improvisationally it’s coming off the top of my head. Scripted would probably make it better, scripted would be better for my corporate main page video or whatever. I might have to rehearse and practice a little bit. But for the most part, people just want to know who you are before they do work with you.

Tips on How to Create Authentic Video Marketing For Your Law Firm

So I’m with the client today, and he had prepared some answers to my questions that he was supposed to talk about. It was very stilted in almost robotic. So what I did was, my buddy Bill was next to me helping out. He’s a videographer, helps us with a lot with my projects. I look at him, and so I just said to my client, “Hey, just relax, take a deep breath in, exhale. We’re going to do this like an interview, and you don’t have to memorize anything. You’re not going to read anything. There’s no script now. I mean we have a framework that we’re going to follow. Yes, but I’m just going to ask you each part of the structure as if it was a question like it was just you and me talking and I’m going to stand next to the camera so that you can look at me and it’ll be close enough to the camera. Okay, so you can have a conversation with me and not this object here that’s really devoid of emotion and scary and weird. Look at me and let’s talk”.

The minute we did that, he just opened up relaxed, and it all came out flowing nicely. Excellent information that he shared, a little bit of emotion. It was a great mix of head and heart, connected entirely with the camera. Everything was great, and afterward, I had to point it out. Each time he did a clip I said, “check this out, look and hear and feel how much easier this was because you simply had a conversation, you relaxed, and you allowed yourself to improvise a little bit.” Even if you have a script, a slight bit of improvisation is not bad if it allows you to relax and be more of yourself.

See, what we don’t want is the mask that you wear when you’re nervous in social situations. What we don’t want is the fake you that you put on for social media to look like duck face, glamour model thing. Nobody wants that garbage anyway. If we’re watching a video, if you’re watching this right now it’s not because you just think I’m amazing. It’s because you believe that I have some content that might be relevant to you and important to you. In addition to that, you want to know that I’m not just shining you on and, and I’m not just pitching you like a used car lot sales guy. You want to see that it’s relevant content. It’s exciting and that I’m at least somewhat trustworthy. In other words, you want to know like, and trust me if I’ll allow you to, right? If I’m going to make it easy for you, if I’m going to make it tough, you’re going to turn it off.

So the same thing goes for any video that you ever want to make is you just got to show a little bit of your personality. So relax. Let yourself improvise a little bit. Yes, use a framework. Use a script if you need, but allow yourself to dance around the points of the text. Think of it as bullet points that you want to follow to keep yourself on track. The other thing is getting someone to have a conversation with if possible, at least to warm you up. Even if you’re doing direct to camera, a little bit of discussion makes it so that it’s natural and it feels like a conversation.

Isn’t that what you want in your marketing? To have a conversation with your potential clients, patients or customers.? That’s all it really is. It is a conversation so they get to know you a little bit better and a little bit more about what you do to determine whether your unique selling proposition or your value proposition makes sense for them and that they trust you enough to even give you a shot at it. So you need to be thinking about that when you’re making a video. If you’re intimidated, you’re either going to come across as intimidated or intimidating and either way, it’s not right.

Now another thing I want to say, I should have probably said this first, but it’s the second major point of this video. I even gave you some sub-points of how to make a better video, but point number two is you should make a video. I have a lot of clients that do anything they can to avoid being on video. They want to spend $7,000 a month on SEO, and they want to buy a fancy website and maybe better photos made, and they will do anything they can to not be in the video.

Some of them don’t even want to be on their website. Usually, that’s not a problem for attorneys cause you guys like to get your picture on everything but video, it can be scary. Maybe you did a commercial for TV like 10 years ago or longer, and you think it’s going to be a pain in the butt like that because you’re considering that it’s got to be overly produced and polished and nerve-wracking and make it drenched with sweat. There are a time and a place for a professional video on your homepage, your website, but for the most part, people want to see more in depth.

That’s where the world is moving towards reality TV, and people are looking for a little bit more of the gritty behind the scenes. So don’t be afraid to show a little bit of that, and hopefully, that helps boost your confidence, so you’re willing actually to do video in the first place. So go out there, make a darn video for your business.

Personal injury leads from the internet are incredibly profitable if you do it right. One of the keys is that you need to make sure that you are getting to this lead before everybody else. There are a lot of ways to do that. You can actually find personal injury leads that are in-market based on their behavior on the internet. You could buy the data and create a closed-loop system with machine learning. If you can put your ad in front of those personal injury leads when they are just at the right stage in the buyer’s journey, then you’ve got a huge market advantage.

Hey guys, I am purposely making a terribly lit video, just got done with working on a client—personal injury attorneys. With the new InMarket personal injury leads program, we got eight leads in 10 days. Now, if you’re used to generating leads or buying leads, you’re probably used to all different levels of quality. So the close rate is the only thing that will really matter. However, there are some indicators. Are the leads responsive? Have they been sold to a whole bunch of other law firms? There’s always a junk lead, which is somebody that responds to something that they don’t even know what they were getting into. You know, like sweepstakes or something, right? There’s a lot of different ways that you might get an internet lead. Internet leads are incredibly profitable if you do it right.

One of the things that are key is that you need to make sure that you’re getting to this lead before everybody else. Especially if it has to do with an attorney, law firm marketing or personal injury especially, auto accident, you have to be there first. I’m not talking about your phone call, I’m before that, before the lead line. Meaning the lead comes in and then you’re doing more of a sales process with your consultative phone calls selling. Before the lead line is when it’s still just floating around out there. It’s on the Internet. It’s somebody who’s looking at an ad or filling out a form or a quiz, and they’re interacting with some of the marketing material that you need to be in front of them early. That’s the game.

There’s a lot of ways to try to do that. Some are better than others. If you’re doing paid ads and SEO, if you are targeting correctly. So if you are the exact keywords that they’re looking for and then your ad is optimized. It gets an excellent click-through rate, and then the page that they land on is particular to what they were searching for. All this as 101 you know, kind of stuff, but just a little reminder. But also who you actually put the ad in front of matters. Here’s where this in marketing stuff gets really crazy. There’s literally data out there from the big companies you have been buying for years. Like the Walmarts and the Targets of the world that you can actually find people that are inmarket based on their search behavior on the Internet.

InMarket Leads Program: An Overview

Now there is such a thing as bots, and there’s such a thing as click fraud and all this other stuff that muddies the water. But if you’re tracking people that actually buy things, you get rid of bots because bots don’t buy things. So that’s number one. Some publishers purchase it, and it’s costly. Typically there are certain ways through different providers that you could potentially buy the data. By the way, if you’re interested in this, we do sell the data. I have access to this kind of data, and you can just go to stoddardagency.com and fill out the contact form or click the button about the Inmarket Leads Program. You learn all about it. So anyway, once you get this kind of data, then there’s machine learning systems. There are a few companies out there, not very many that are developing methods to analyze the data and watch for purchase behavior and creating behavioral profiles.

In other words, if somebody goes all the way to your website and they sign up with you to hire a personal injury attorney. We were to go back in time before that person actually submitted the form or made the phone call, they did certain things before they got to that point. Which then we can compare to other people. And the buyers tend to have buyer behavior. Only 3% of any given market is actually ready to buy now. 7% no, they don’t want to, they’re shopping, but they’re not 100% sure. They haven’t chosen, they’re still thinking about it. The other 90% is not even really in the market.

You’re looking for the needles in the haystack. So you can analyze this and create a closed-loop system with machine learning. We backtrack, and we think about what that we look at, not think about, at exactly what that person did. Which websites they visit, what social media platforms, how many seconds of a video did they watch and where? Track all that and you can actually find patterns. Then you can see that with statistical relevance, this person’s going to buy again. Or come back into the market for something. Or this other person looks is doing the same thing this other person does. We think they’re going to buy next.

Chances are you’re right, statistically. Here’s the key. If you can put your ad in front of those people when they’re just at the right stage in the buyers’ journey, from awareness all the way through to making a decision and justifying the decision, you’ve got a huge market advantage. I believe that all of your marketing needs to be focused on that. Even your brand building, if you’re going to do an intent-based brand building like this and you’re sharing content on the internet. Or if you’re doing the old school, broadcast media or whatever. If you can find a way to put your ad in front of people, the right people that are inmarket for what you sell, you can show the ad more often.

You can customize things. You can put your brand in front of them faster than your competitors, which means you control the conversation, you control the framing of it. You can influence buyer behavior. It’s a huge advantage. So if you don’t know about inmarket targeting, set your Google alerts to learn about machine learning and people based marketing. That’s where we’re going. It doesn’t replace old fashion, phone calls with the person, the human contact. But it’s the way to get to that contact, to begin with, faster than your competitors.

So I got just starting a new client on this program, in about 10 days, we got eight leads, and these are people that were getting in front of before the competitors. So by definition if we close these, which were likely going to close several, at least, we are basically going to be stealing our competitor’s business, right?

Advantages of Using the InMarket Leads Program

So, in addition to that, we have a lower cost per click, lower cost per acquisition because they’re more relevant targeted ads to people that are going to click through at a higher rate. They are more likely to become customers versus your general pay per click marketing that everybody is doing on either Google AdWords or Facebook. These are the type of advantages I’m talking about now. If you want help with that by the way, and you want to explore this and see if it’s a good fit for your law firm, then contact me, go to stoddardagency.com and click on the link about InMarket Targeting, and we’ll get to you and help you with that. So once you have the concept of that down and you’re able to access some of the data, you can also create lookalike audiences.

Then you can leverage Google and Facebook because you can say, here’s an audience of people that we’ve shown across the Internet are likely to buy. Then we can put that, upload that to Facebook and Google and say, now create a lookalike audience on this. And we can leverage Facebook and Google’s technology to find people leaving more people that are very similar. They don’t give you that information. They don’t tell you by name. If you have a pixel, everybody’s got a pixel on their website, Pixel Facebook or you know, analytics and you’re doing retargeting. This is not retargeting. Well, it’s retargeting on steroids. You add retargeting to this, but Facebook and Google aren’t telling you by name who those people are. You just have to use it on their platform.

What I’m talking about is actually being able to identify them by name and take it into a different platform if you want. So if Google or Facebook changes the rules, you just pull out and put it somewhere else that we’re at where it does work. I get a question a lot of times, well, how does this happen? Is this legal? Yes, it’s entirely legal. It’s totally legit. It’s your purchase, this is data that’s purchased and then AI systems that are analyzing it. Machine learning. How does it work? Well, it’s complicated, but the brief version is, we have a particular pixel that’s put on a website, and also publishers site behind the firewall behind where people buy. Obviously, this is expensive. This is something you just can’t hack. This is proprietary stuff here and a pretty complicated system and a lot of negotiation.

And basically, the pixel places a cookie on the user’s website. Now if you use a pixel like Facebook or Google, those have a time limit. They’re going to run out usually 30 days. All somebody has to do is click clear cookies, and it’s gone, and you lose all that precious tracking that you’re doing. With this, it doesn’t work that way because it’s better than that. We have the cookie and then as soon as the person does anything with these publishers, we’re matching up name multiple email addresses. We’re matching up as much information. It’s all connected nowadays. We’ve got, name, address, phone number, everything, email, buying behavior obviously, but also credit scores and all that other stuff. It’s basically like a grid. Every time that cookie fires off we go, oh, okay.

Do we have this person in the system, no, gather the email and the information and oh, they’re already in the system. Okay. They visited the website, they’re already there. They’re already in our system. And so it’s adding all that information up into that buyer profile and it becomes more powerful because it’s tracking all the URL, behavior, social media, behavior, everything. And it’s collecting it permanently. Forever. You can have it. Now there’s a lot of security, a protocol that needed to be followed. So if you’re worried about that, everything’s above board, everything’s legitimate. It’s all encrypted with what’s called a hash file. And the hash file is something just so that it’s not out there all over the place that can be uploaded to Google or whatever.

It’s basically encrypted technology. So we’ve got all of that covered. And that’s important. The point is though, is if you have a way of getting your advertisement in front of people before your competitors, it’s a huge advantage, and inmarket targeting is a way to do it. So anyway, that’s a quick overview. It’s exciting. You got to understand that there’s this thing called the Internet of Things and there’s the Internet of Everything. It’s all of these sensors, I don’t know how many, millions it was, it might be like a billion, or there could be like a trillion or something, in the next decade or less that are coming online. I mean, everything from your refrigerator in your microwave, having sensors in it that are collecting data, home security systems, driverless cars, it’s all collecting information and then it’s putting together on a network.

So it was only a matter of time before they did this with marketing. I would say at least 12, 24 months ahead of just about every other, every other company out there that’s trying to do this. So we’re ahead of the game. But it’s the future. It’s coming. I mean, you’re going to hear about this in a couple of years. You’re gonna hear about it all the time. However, if you get in early, you can have a competitive advantage over the competitors because you’ll have already saturated that market and grown in that market and made it stronger. Keep this in mind too. If you already have inmarket leads going and you have the machine learning happening and studying your market, it’s getting smarter, more optimized.

The ads are becoming better. If a competitor comes in with trying to do even something remotely similar, you’re so far ahead, their systems behind, it’s kind of like a race that you’re like already a foot from the finish line, and they have to start at the beginning and try to work their way in. So the sooner you engage in this technology, the better. If you want help with any of this stuff, again, go to http://stoddardagency.com Click on https://stoddardagency.com/services/in-market-personal-injury-leads-for-attorneys-and-law-firms/ or instant message me. We’ll hook you up, we’ll get you the information at least so you can see if it makes sense for you and we’ll have a discovery call. Learn about your business and figure out, hey, does this make sense for me right now? Is this a good idea?

If you’re already advertising on the Internet though, if you’re doing any kind of pay per click, if you’re spending money on advertising, then you ought to be doing this. If you’re a small firm, you don’t really pay it. You’re only on referrals right now, and you’re just getting started. Maybe not yet. I don’t know. Possibly could give you a jumpstart, but as a law firm grows their diversification and marketing has to happen for them to get enough lead flow. Typically most of the bigger guys, if you’re over a couple million a year, usually it’s like three to 5% of your business comes from referrals. Now that’s something that I know someone’s going to go and argue with me about. But if you look at your numbers, it’s not as many as you think.

Referrals are fantastic, but how do you get referrals in the first place? You have to get out there in front of people that are inmarket and then ask them who they know and then hope. Then if they know anybody who just got in a car accident, they refer it. But that’s the in market people. People that buy 100% of your business comes from people that are inmarket for what you sell. If you add to that that they are a referral, then great. It’s more powerful that way. But if they’re not inmarket, they’re not inmarket. So anyway, I hope you enjoy that. Have a great day, guys. Talk to you next time.

]]>The 5 M’s for Law Firm Marketing Strategieshttps://stoddardagency.com/the-5-ms-for-law-firm-marketing-strategies/
https://stoddardagency.com/the-5-ms-for-law-firm-marketing-strategies/#respondFri, 22 Feb 2019 10:16:58 +0000https://stoddardagency.com/?p=1006Looking for new law firm marketing strategies without using tactics that might be pushing your prospects away instead of attracting them? The 5 M’s Marketing Machine Method will give your law firm the marketing strategies that provide results without you losing integrity. Watch the Youtube video to find out how.
Marketing Strategies for Law Firms

5 M’s Marketing Strategies for your Law Firm

Jesse Stoddard here, excited to tell you about a new book that I am writing that will be available soon. It’s for personal injury attorneys who want to learn how to grow their practice ethically using effective powerful marketing strategies. I am specifically writing this for certain kind of attorney or law firm. There are attorneys out there that are better than others. I think that there’s some that have more integrity, and have ethical and moral constraints that they follow for themselves. I believe that there are attorneys that do care about their clients. I’ve worked with some of them, and I know that they’re out there.

If you believe you’re the best attorney in terms of work ethic, integrity, and also get your clients results, then you qualify for this book. I think that it’s going to help those that are ready mostly. They understand the law and how to build a longterm business in terms of quality.

Maybe as you’ve noticed, the best attorneys aren’t always the richest. The best attorneys aren’t the one with the most clients. As we know, it’s the best marketing attorneys. There are many loud ones out there spending much money saying a lot of crazy stuff to get a client. What if you don’t want to have to be like them, but you also want to grow your business. So sometimes there’s a little conundrum. I want to warn you against listening to marketing gurus from the legal industry. There’s a lot of good ones, no offense to the advice that they’re giving. There’s a lot of great people out there, but many times they’re stuck in the ways of the legal industry. I think you’re better off listening to somebody outside of the industry.

The Best Marketing Ideas for Law Firms

Some of the best marketing ideas and tactics come from other industries that you can borrow and adapt to your own. Often, if you’re in your world all day long, you have different reasons for doing what you do. You might not even be aware of them and you are doing your marketing in a way that is helping you look good in front of other attorneys. You might be a little worried about ruffling feathers and feel like you have to look good at the association meetings.

But none of that matters. What matters is how you look in front of your clients. I’m going to provide you something that I’m excited. Today I’m going to talk about one little element that’s going to be in the book, just one short chapter is called the 5 M’s Marketing Machine Method. It’s is for somebody that wants to go from helter-skelter plan all the way to a marketing machine. So if you’re going to build a marketing machine, you need the 5 M’s.

The first M is Market, the second M is Message, the third M is Map, the fourth M is Media, and the fifth M is Measure. I’m pretty proud of this. I came up with this after a lot of work, and I had all these different strategies and mind maps and finally realize there’s 5 M’s here. So this is the patented Jesse Stoddard Stoddard Agency Marketing Plan for success. In the book, I’m going to go through all of these in detail.

5 M’s for Law Firm Marketing

1. Market

There are 7 secrets to having the right market identified. Everything from checking out what the current evidence that is out there to determine what’s working and what the market is demanding or if there is potential demand. Find out the sub-niches and subcultures within the group of people that would be most likely to want to hire a lawyer.

The obvious things like the demographics and the psychographics, that’s not good enough nowadays, but that’s a start, testing your assumptions. Looking at people that are actually in market data. There’s also the Avatar or ideal target market profile you can build. Then there’s assessing that progress, and there’s a system that I have outlined in there that you can do every quarter. You can even have people on your team help you out with it, or even outsource if you need to. But you didn’t have to be aware of these things so that you are in charge of the overall operation and master this

2. Message

So in the message, there is knowing how to say and what to say so that that particular market you’re targeting is going to be interested in what you have to say. Are you calling out to them and them only in a way that they’re going to receive you apart from the competition?

3. MAP

Stands for Marketing Automation Plan. I believe that every business, especially in law firm needs some marketing automation plan because you have holes in your bucket. Some leads and prospects are leaking. Some clients used to be in your system that is not sending you the referrals they ought to. They would if you would only follow up properly at the right timing and in the right way with the right message. You can’t be all things to all people in all places to all people, but with the use of technology, you pretty much can. Also, you want to add a personal touch to that. So I show you how to have a marketing automation plan that’s still has a personal touch.

4. Media

The media, we talk about media lot. Usually what you are sold every day is media. It might be disguised as something else, but it’s media. You have a Sales Rep from a marketing company and agency SEO firm, website development. Those are the big ones that are hitting the lawyers. You probably have five messages today, asking you to hire me to do something for you. We’re better than the other guys and gals. So what’s important are understanding that marketing media is actually like investing. Most financial planners recommend diversification. We do the same thing with my clients. Also bucketing, which is similar to investing, bucketing specific dollars to certain things so that you can find your target market and appeal to them from all angles often simultaneously.

It’s called omnipresence. It’s when you show up not to everybody, but not blasting out there like the Superbowl commercial and wasting all your money. You’re showing up everywhere to the right target market at the right time. We talk about that as well. You’re building an asset. It’s important to look at it as a marketing asset, not an expenditure, not a quick fix to a problem of lead generation, but a longterm asset. You put in a dollar, you get out of a dollar and ten, and that’s all real business. All it does is taking your investment capital and multiplying it. So, you’re putting on $1, and you’re getting out $1.5 $2 and $10. By the way, I have some ideas to help you 7,8 and 10X that investment and think it’s 7 or 8 times right now.

5. Measure

You’ve got to measure everything. It’s is the only way that you know it’s working. It always amazes me how many attorneys are measuring their results. You need a closed loop system. We talk about accountability with all of the media and to all your marketing channels. All your strategies have to have accountability. The next one is attribution and analytics. So this is the technical term you hear on the digital marketing side. It’s just a fancy term to explain accountability because we want to attribute a sale or in our case an accepted client, assigned client to a marketing channel. It’s very tricky nowadays. There are many tools, and there are many methods. I don’t know if any of them were foolproof yet.

Technology is getting better all the time, but you’d have to have some system that’ll help you to attribute where the leads are coming. Then analytics and here’s something that I want you to remember about this in general. Always consider the big picture if you have to make big decisions. So when you’re thinking about how do I want to grow my firm, how do I want to execute on my marketing plan and my strategy correctly? Think the 5 M’s, Market, Message, MAP, Media, Measure. Think of this as the big picture of what you’re trying to accomplish as it relates to your goals in your business and your firm.

Check out my book. I’m going to have this up pretty soon. Keep an eye out on it. Make sure that you subscribe to my channels for more law firm marketing strategies and like all my stuff so that you keep seeing it and you’ll get those updates. You can also send me an email or send us an email support@stoddardagency.com or visit http://www.stoddardagency/contactif you want to make sure you’re on the early bird list. I will be offering this at a discount at first when it first rolls out. So thank you again. Those are the 5 M’S for Law Firm Marketing, and they are going to be only one chapter in a book that you’re going to be excited about.

]]>https://stoddardagency.com/the-5-ms-for-law-firm-marketing-strategies/feed/0How To Avoid Legal CRM Software Headacheshttps://stoddardagency.com/how-to-avoid-legal-crm-software-headaches/
https://stoddardagency.com/how-to-avoid-legal-crm-software-headaches/#respondTue, 19 Feb 2019 06:24:13 +0000https://stoddardagency.com/?p=1000The use of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is becoming the norm in the legal industry. It’s a prevalent form of Software-as-a-Service (SAAS) offering, with many companies vying for your attention to help you automate contract and client management.Legal CRM software headaches

There’s a lot of them in the legal field, with some hybrids even combining lead capture with the traditional legal CRM software functions. There’s also the lead management, follow-up, and nurture side of the equation, with a few platforms trying to offer full-service, such as what is being done by the LMS system by Leading Response. Their system works great for social security disability leads, but not so much with personal injury leads.

I have some client attorneys use this legal CRM process for follow up, making phone calls and sending emails, a system that can track and send information to their case management software. This process is a bit complicated, and most attorneys spend too much time learning the complexities of these systems, which becomes a bit overwhelming for attorneys who are not experts in this field (and I would argue, that none of them should be).

If you are a personal injury law firm having headaches with your legal CRM software, simplifying your process by eliminating underperforming systems and automating those that are producing results could get you out of this stressful situation. It sounds tougher than it really is. The solution might be right under your nose.

Get someone on your team that can help you! Don’t try doing this yourself and lose precious billable hours learning something that you know nothing about (or really shouldn’t know anything about).

Instead of asking, “How?” Ask the better question; “Who?”

If you can’t find someone within your firm, find a subcontractor who will do it on a project basis and make sure that they’re available the next time it breaks (because software systems always do eventually).

The problem with most law firms is that they forget the legal CRM system once it is set up. After all, wasn’t the point to set it and forget it in the first place? However, most of the time it requires maintenance because one of the programs has a software update or something happens and isn’t linked up properly one day, and now all of your lead systems are shut down.

After hiring your marketing manager (or at the very least an assistant or consultant), the next step would be finding the best technology to use in your firm that not only allows you case management systems but also lead management. Ideally, you want to have a steady, and consistent influx of personal injury leads in the system.

There is new software today that is more efficient than the old-school marketing funnels showing dismal results. This new software assists with building funnels, landing pages, autoresponder follow-up, and are the latest technologies that can help you persuade prospects to make the phone call.

This is why you need a good “who”. This person should not only help you work the system but making them a part of the selection and integration process assists with getting their buy-in and full commitment.

Even if you’re a small firm, you can afford a part-time marketing manager to handle the prospecting, lead generation, follow-up, automation systems, social media, and review management. Build yourself a team around you to take care of it. Focus on having a unique ability framework for your organization where everybody is doing what they are fascinated and motivated by, so you can stick to winning cases and building an exemplary reputation for your personal injury law firm.

If you want your personal injury law firm to generate free flowing leads into your CRM system using people based marketing, contact me at www.stoddardagency.com/contact for a no obligation, free discovery call.